Operation Alamo
by Horizon V
Summary: A story inspired by Unreal Tournament. Rick, a soldier in the army, is tasked to guard a munitions dump with the rest of his unit. The odds of survival are slim, however, and reinforcements are long in coming...


Operation: Alamo

"Hey, toss me one of those clips!"

Rick grabbed an ammo clip out of its box and tossed it the soldier who had just called over to him. The clip fell about two feet short.

"Yeah, nice toss," the soldier muttered. "Come on, we don't have time for this!"

"Sorry..." Rick turned away, trying to hide his mix of emotion. Some of it was simply embarrassment, but most of it was nervousness tipped with terror. The battleground was drawing ever nearer.

Rick walked away, hoping to find a place to be alone. He needed some time to calm down and focus. He had a mission to complete. It was important for him to be here. But if it was such an important mission, why did it seem like suicide? Perhaps it was just pessimism. He wasn't told the whole story, how many troops there were, what odds they were facing. He'd just have to do his duty and hope for the best.

He found a spot behind some boxes and sat down. Taking long, deep breaths, he tried to eliminate all doubts from his mind. It wasn't working very well, but he kept at it. He had some time before the enemy arrived. He covered his ears to shut out the sounds of guns being loaded, uniforms being zipped, boots walking around, helmets being clipped; the sounds of war were making the situation worse. Continuing to breathe deeply, he closed his eyes and tried to focus...

A hand on his shoulder brought him back to the real world. He glanced over his shoulder, saying "What?" in the faintest of voices. It was Aubree. She gave him a warm smile.

"You okay?" she asked, her voice reassuring.

"Sort of," Rick responded. "I... I'm having trouble concentrating. Guess I'm a bit nervous..."

"Oh, Ricky," she put an arm around him. "I know it's tough the first time around. You've just got to believe in yourself. Have a little confidence. We'll _all_ make it."

"It's the confidence thing that's giving me the most trouble."

"Yeah, that's the hardest part. But you know what?" she gave him a tight squeeze. "No matter what happens here, we'll see our way through it together."

Something about being in Aubree's arms suddenly made everything all right. He returned her hug and his fear seemed to simply fall away. When they pulled apart, they looked straight into each other's eyes.

"So are you ready to join the rest of us again?" she asked him. Rick nodded. He was in control of this mission now. None of those poor, dumb bastards were going to escape from his sights. After all, Rick's team held a strategic advantage. Holed up in an ammunition dump turned bunker, they had cover and an ammunition supply. All they had to do was hold the fort until reinforcements arrived. Things didn't look so bad after all.

"Enemies approaching from the south side! Take your positions!"

Aubree glanced over her shoulder and turned back to Rick. She gave him a quick hug and stood up. Unslinging her weapon, she readied it and fitted it to her body. Rick did the same and looked back to Aubree as if to say, "It's time." She nodded back to him and both ran to their positions.

As Rick silently watched out of his foxhole, the uncertainty and fear began to return. How many of them were there? He could barely see them approaching. He counted twenty, maybe thirty... They continued to come over the hill and more soldiers steadily came into view. They were already far outnumbered. Could they really rely on just their cover and ammunition supply?

"Snipers, ready..." he heard a voice call. He wasn't a sniper, but he tightened his grip on his gun anyway. Hopefully the snipers would weed out many of the troops before they even got to the fort.

"Snipers, fire!"

At once, Rick began to see advancing soldiers fall to the ground. Even still, the rest of the soldiers continued to advance. Either their commanding officers considered taking this base their top priority or they simply didn't care about their troops. But even the deaths of their comrades surrounding them didn't stop the enemy soldiers from advancing at full speed.

"Hey, Rick! Your helmet!"

Rick glanced over and for the first time noticed Ken crouching next to him, but he didn't quite understand what he'd said.

"Huh?"

"Your helmet! Buckle your helmet!" Rick dropped his gun and felt for the buckles of his helmet. Sure enough, they were unclipped. Fumbling about for a few seconds, his trembling hands finally managed to clip the buckle together. He tightened the drawstring and pushed the helmet forward on his head.

"Hurry, Rick! They're right on top of us!" Rick grabbed at his gun again and, clenching it tightly, took aim at a group of soldiers leading the rest. Almost in range...

"Infantry, ready..." he heard Commander Fuller shout behind him. Ready? He sure hoped so. There sure were a lot of them. Quite a few were dying at the hands of the snipers, but their sheer numbers made an advance on the base not only possible, but frighteningly effective. He picked out a soldier to fire at. He'd never actually done this...

"Infantry, fire!"

Fuller's words were punctuated by automatic weapons pumping out their ammunition supplies like there was no tomorrow. After all, there might not be. Rick's own gun began spewing out bullets. As he watched, soldiers' flesh was ripped apart and was stained that awful red color. Screams accompanied the sounds of gunfire, writing a frightful symphony of fatality.

'They're dying,' It suddenly occurred to Rick.

A tiny part of him began to feel sorry for the enemy soldiers. As he squeezed the trigger, another life came to an abrupt halt. The only thing that kept him firing was the frightening realization that if he didn't kill them, they'd kill him. With that in mind, he continued to shower his targets with bullets. Fear drove him on. Fear and nothing else.

'They're all dying.'

Rick continued to fire at - to kill - the enemy soldiers, but the faster he did so, the faster the enemy seemed to come. The swarm of soldiers advanced on the base slowly, but not slowly enough for Rick. As another soldier hit the ground, pierced by a shot from Rick's own gun, Rick noticed a trail of smoke in the air. But not in the sky. In fact, it couldn't be more than twenty feet off of the ground. He followed the trail to its front and saw a white, cylindrical object tipped with red...

"Incoming!" Just a second after he heard the shout, he heard the sound of an explosion off towards his left and screams of the wounded and dying.

'Rocket launchers?' Rick thought. 'Firing right into our foxholes!'

Another explosion came from his right. More screams and more death. He risked a glance over to the site of the explosion and saw bodies charred black, but colored with blood. One man walked around, his clothing and skin completely on fire. His screams were unworldly. Rick turned back to the enemy and began firing, his heart trying to leap out of his chest. He hoped to God that a rocket didn't land near him.

"Oh, shit!" Ken had just realized what the source of the explosions was. "How're we gonna survive those damn rockets!" Rick hoped that his commanding officer knew how. For now, he just had to kill.

'My allies are dying.'

The sound of another explosion from an undeterminable direction set Rick's nerves off again. He kept firing, not even stopping while switching targets. His stream of ammunition simply kept coming. Suddenly, his gun stopped firing and started clicking. Out of ammo. Rick ducked down and started replacing the clip on his gun. He was rushed and he was nervous, so his hands kept fumbling about and costing him time. A shout from Ken caused him to look up at him. He was yelling something, but Rick could no longer make it out over the sounds of gunfire and explosions. He stood up and looked where Ken seemed to be indicating.

Before he could find out what it was, however, Ken gave him a shoulder slam and knocked him back a good eight feet. Rick looked back at Ken just in time to see something collide with his head. A large ball of fire erupted from the point of impact and lit up the room. Rick could feel the intense heat of the explosion from his seat on the ground and his eyes nearly burned. He turned his head away and shielded his eyes. When the heat was gone, he looked back over to where his friend had been standing. Where he had once stood.

He saw, instead, a headless, smoking corpse, charred black, still partly on fire and still clutching a ruined automatic rifle. The wall behind it was splattered with blood and slimy innards. Ken was gone.

"Ken!" he cried uselessly. "Why... ?" Rick's mind went in wild circles, ranging everywhere and nowhere all at once. He finally focused in, however, on a single thought.

'My friends are dying.'

A voice in the back of Rick's mind echoed something. Something that a commanding officer had once said to his entire troop.

'When you put your hand into a pile of goo that was once your best friend's _face_... you'll know what to do.'

Rick gripped his rifle tightly. He knew exactly what to do. But could he do it? He was still shaking and fear utterly consumed him. A soldier can get killed at any time. Just how much time did he have left? Regardless, he aimed out of the foxhole and pulled the trigger once more. Nothing.

He'd forgotten to finish reloading his weapon. In a mix of rage and panic, he sat back down to resume his reload. As he did so, he began to hear the shouts of commanding officers more distinctly.

"We've gotta get those rocket launchers off our backs!"

"Sure! What do you suggest?"

"Get the snipers to pick them off! They're more dangerous than the advancing foot soldiers!"

"All our snipers have been killed by the rockets!"

"Well, do _we_ have rockets! There's got to be something we can hit them with!"

"I'm not sure just what we have left anymore! We need to- Jesus Christ! Look out!"

Another explosion sounded from the direction of the voices. Who had died now? Rick wasn't sure, but that didn't mean that it had any less of an effect on him. Death was slowly surrounding him and would soon close for the kill. Was there any hope for escape? More shouting, this time more distinct than ever, drew his attention.

"Enemy has breached the bunker! Enemy has breached the bunker!"

Now they were inside! Rick didn't know what to do. He couldn't decide whether to stay put and continue to fire on the enemy outside or to abandon his post and fight the enemy on the inside. In a vein of only halfway decisiveness, he decided to stay at his post until further orders. He turned back to the outdoors and fired on the enemy once again. He could only hope that his comrades were fending off the intruders.

And fend they did. The gunfire that he heard from inside the bunker quickly became louder than that from the outside. He risked glancing back a few times. Apparently, many soldiers had been pulled from their posts and were guarding the door. They could systematically kill soldiers as they came in, but if they were ever swamped by a mad rush...

"Rick! Never mind your post!" called a familiar voice. Rick turned around to find Aubree shouting towards him with a look of urgency. "We need more soldiers at the doors!"

'Finally, someone telling me what to do!' Rick hadn't really ever been one to like taking orders when he didn't have to, but this time he was grateful for it. He got back up and hurried over to Aubree. With their guns leading the way, they both made their way to one of the entrances. Before they got there, however, they ran into someone unexpected.

Aubree recovered first out of all three and peppered the enemy soldier with submachine gun fire. Rick was relieved, but was also angry at himself for being the last to recover. How was he ever going to be able to do well if he couldn't react? More importantly, how did that enemy soldier get inside? He'd have had to make it past the soldiers guarding the door and that was impossible. Unless there was an alternate way in...

"Aubree, I think they found a secret way in or something!" Rick shouted over the sounds of war.

"But where?" Aubree called back. "Where do we start looking?"

They didn't have to look long. Two more soldiers charged into the room, guns blazing. Rick and Aubree pulled their guns to firing position and returned fire. Both got their man. As Rick let go of his trigger, both men fell dead.

"They must be entering from over there!" Rick shouted, indicating with his hand the direction the soldiers had come from. He started in that direction, but then noticed that Aubree didn't follow. He turned around and saw her on her knees, clutching her right arm. Her face was twisted with pain.

"Aubree!" Rick ran to his fallen comrade. "Aubree, are you okay!"

"It's..." Aubree said with a grunt and looked up, "...it's not bad..." Suddenly, her eyes widened and her mouth flew open. "Rick, look out!"

She jumped in front of Rick just before gunfire rang out. Rick stepped back, surprised. He looked to the entrance to find yet another soldier firing a submachine gun. He brought his own gun up and fired a shot that flew straight and true. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aubree fall to the ground, lifeless. The enemy staggered backwards and dropped his weapon. Rick forgot everything and ran to Aubree once more. Her body was riddled with gunshot wounds that bled fresh blood. He cried out her name once more, but she was already gone.

'The people I love...'

He heard a sound. The wounded enemy soldier was trying to recover his gun. Rick brought his weapon to bear and fired nine shots in quick succession. The enemy didn't live to feel hitting the ground.

'...are dying...'

Rick turned back to Aubree, angry tears forming in his eyes. A flame seemed to ignite in his heart. This was different from Ken in so many ways. The flame grew to encompass all around him. He slowly backed away from the corpse, his mind's eye seeing it burst into flames. So much fire around him. Was it fire? No...

...death. It was death that surrounded Rick.

'Everyone... is dying...'

The flames licked at Rick's clothing and hair. The flames seemed to gather into sentient beings. He could see soldiers with bandages. Soldiers with wounds. Soldiers without limbs. One by one, they each collapsed and writhed in agony. Then, they were all still.

'Everyone is... going to die...'

He ran away from the depictions of death, mind reeling with thoughts he did not want to believe. Nothing seemed real anymore. The flames mixed with reality and grew stronger. The gunfire growing louder in his ears mixed with the horrifying crackling of the fire. Dead soldiers were consumed with flame. Or were they there at all? Was everyone really going to die? Would anyone survive?

'Everyone is... I'm going to die...'

The one thought triggered an uncontrollable, emotionless fear. He tore blindly through the bunkers, shooting without thinking. He could nearly taste death now.

'When is it my turn...?'

He came upon a large group of soldiers from both sides. Standing in the open, he opened fire, killing anyone he saw. Bullets flew by him, but none touched him.

'My turn...?'

His gun kept moving, kept shooting, kept killing. As soldiers died, more poured into the room. One by one, soldiers died at the hands of another. With wild abandon, Rick continued his reckless destruction. For every soldier that died, the question grew in his mind.

'When is it my turn?'

The sound of his thoughts became deafening.

'My turn?'

His gun ran dry of ammunition. Rick looked down at it dumbly. His mind couldn't grasp the concept of what he had to do with it. He dropped the gun and simply stood, slowly looking around with an insanely panicked look on his face.

'MY TURN!'

Then he remembered the pistol on his leg holster. His hand drew the gun automatically. And lifted it up as high as his head...

"WHEN'S IT MY TURN!" he found himself screaming. Then, he pointed the gun at his head and fired...


End file.
